[General Battuta]

Click the icon in the lower left, then click the alien.

[Scotty]

You have to click the icon of your weapon, pick what kind of attack you want to use (you'll see how many TUs it costs), and that should give you the crosshair.  It will turn yellow when a valid target is selected.

Right click to de-select that firing mode so you don't end up accidentally murdering your whole squad.

[jr2]

Sweet, thanks.  Do I have to run around collecting artifacts from the alien corpses before leaving, or is that automatic once victory is achieved?

[General Battuta]

Automatic

e: unless you're evacuating instead of winning the mission

[NGTM-1R]

The new Hyperwave Decoders are both a blessing and a curse. We're doing a lot of deployments now, so the "two weeks" time to build and deploy Flying Suits is going to seem a lot longer than it would have before the Decoders came online. Squad One and Squad Two are both inbound to landed UFOs in Siberia; Squad One is at full strength, while Squad Two has been reinforced by Alex Heartnet from the Squad One reserve and will deploy with seven soldiers and the tank. Squad Two will arrive before dark, but Squad One won't. Fortunately, they have four Flying Suits now.

Detailed action reports to follow.

[NGTM-1R]

Squad 2 took the ship without losing anyone, though several people sustained injury. I know, I'm shocked too, particularly since there were 3 Floaters in the second anteroom. Several Floaters attempted to hide on top of their own UFO where Squad 2 couldn't reach them, but that didn't end well for them when there was a hill the same height next to it. Mjn.Mixael performed well as squad sergeant. He was injured when he had to clear a room using his missile launcher rather than any of the more normal methods (there were three enemies in it, most of them facing the door, so reaction fire to any weapon that didn't kill them all at once was going to happen), but only a turn later he gunned down a Floater with his pistol as it came through the door. Without him, it's very likely two or three people would have died to clear that room. Watsisname has taken over Headdie's missile launcher and while admittedly still getting into shape, did reasonably well.

Squad 2 also scored a moral victory of sorts. As they closed in, the ship's commander started screaming and sprayed plasma fire around the bridge, as Squad 2's systematic destruction of his command was too much for him to handle. He recovered his wits and went down shooting for a purpose (but he missed), but Alex brought him down with a well-aimed laser shot.

Squad 1's Skyranger will be landing shortly.

[Ravenholme]

Holy crap, Squad 2 actually survived a mission with no casualties and panicked an alien ship commander? That is awesome

[NGTM-1R]

Here in sunny Siberia, well above the Arctic Circle, it's a balmy -34 degrees. We'd tell you if that's Farenheit or Centigrade, but the last guy who tried to look blinked and his eyelashes froze to his cheek. Those of you in personal armor, well, I hope you wore your thermal underwear.


One alien challenged KyadCK to rifles at twenty paces. It missed (this is a recurring theme with Flying Suits by now), but KyadCK did not.


TrashMan and KyadCK lead the way towards the UFO with their Flying Suits, while -Joshua- and SpardaSon use theirs to scout the area in concert with still ground-bound The E and and Jg18. Two more rifles are used to back up Trash and Kyad, but Fury and Scourge of Ages have something special: Heavy Plasmas.


The first real test of the Flying Suit: TrashMan just got shot. UnFortunately he survives, and returns fire to kill the alien. Another alien shoots the still-Personal Armored The E, and meets a similar fate. Neither HLPX-COM operative is injured.

We're on the Ice Shelf here, quite close the edge in fact. What the aliens thought they could abduct out here is mystery. (Maybe they're dealing with the Whale Probe from Voyage Home.) How the ship didn't crash through the ice is also a mystery; presumably it's still under power and is somehow negating most of its mass. We know they have a non-reaction drive.

Anybody who goes into the water and isn't in a Flying Suit isn't coming out alive. The tank is carefully kept away from the edge where possible.

KyadCK meets another alien. He's tempted to just punch it and test the suit enhancements, but The E would probably get fairly pissed at him for risking that, so he just shoots it.


Amazingly, the alien takes all three hits and fires back, but Kyad's armor stops it. Scourge of Ages uses his Heavy Plasma to ensure the alien's demise.

Meanwhile, both The E and Jg18 ran out of energy heading to the map corners and back. No stamina, guys! They and SpardaSon/-Joshua- are told to take a break, as being exhausted in this environment is potentially life-threatening. The rest of the team can handle the UFO. (I actually did not end up regretting writing that.)


Something happened here; plasma shots were exchanged and something blew up, but **** if I know what. I never saw an alien, and though I heard one die, there's no body. I suspect, based on past experience, that it's the crappy coding and design of this class of UFO. Things can occasionally be seen through exterior walls and the floors, implying a line of sight that any attempt to actually fire will quickly disprove.


Everyone assembles around the lift. Kyad goes first and clears the hall towards the bridge with a burst of laser fire, killing one alien. TrashMan advances next. Fury and Scourge of Ages will follow soon with their heavy firepower. No further resistance is met before arriving at the door to the bridge.


TrashMan leads the breach. He trades remarkably inaccurate fire with the alien captain; both sides miss their first auto bursts, but Trash recovers by not missing his second. Kyad storms in after him while Fury and Scourge grab corners; but the room is empty save for the dead captain.


Mission Complete. The first real combat use of the Flying Suit can be considered an unqualified success.


By the time Squad One returns to base, sufficient Flying Suits have been completed to issue them to the whole squad. Squad Two will start receiving them in the very near future.

Many UFOs have been detected inbound to the Asia/Australia area, but we've largely been unable to intercept them and the Skyrangers are too slow to follow them to their operational areas. A new base is being constructed on Luzon in the Phillipines, with the working codename "Storm Track" to monitor this activity and stage interceptions out of. Anyone with a better name, make your suggestions.

[General Battuta]

squad one, y'all are tryhards

i lit one up last night and had a thought: maybe all those UFOs in australia are, like, kickin it, y'know? maybe they built some kind of a *puff*

some kind of a

like, a den, man, you know? like a safe place, to escape worldly persecution. can you dig?

cows, man. ****ed up what they do to cows

[NGTM-1R]

Dekker and Interceptor 3 conducted our first sortie with the Plasma Beam. The hapless Large Scout managed to flee over water after buzzing Cairo, but Dekker took it down with the first shots fired. This weapon will replace Avalanches on all our Interceptors.

The Plasma Beam itself is a copy of UFO weaponry, modeled after the damaged weapons we pulled off the pair of Terror Ships we shot down. Our copy should actually be better than those, in range at least, because we up-engineered it for a fixed mount; our Interceptors do not require the multi-vector engagement capability of alien ships.

In other news, our interrogation of the Floater Leader Squad 2 captured at such cost has yielded important information. We now have a rough location for the alien's staging point for attacking Earth.

We think, though we are not certain, that the aliens are launching from somewhere in the Cydonia region. HLPX-COM is coordinating with member governments and world space agencies to stage what we've termed "Operation Spoilsport", a nuclear carpet bombardment of the entire Cydonia region. The main limiting factor is time; while the first Spoilsport rockets will launch inside the week, they won't impact for over a year. It is hoped that capturing an alien commander and interrogating him will both give us an exact location to tighten the bombardment pattern, and hopefully a more timely means of assaulting the base; perhaps by hijacking a UFO to Mars to deliver the warheads more quickly.

The interrogation gave us disturbing news: the aliens have a base somewhere on Earth.

[TrashMan]

Am I still a squaddie? Ranks in X-Com work in mysterious ways.

[Thaeris]

Although, Oh Captain My Captain, The E, I do wonder how you managed to skip Lt.

In any sense, I volunteer myself for research, engineering, and development.

[The E]

There are no Lieutenants in this outfit. We go straight to the good ranks.

[Fury]

Yay, I didn't die in my first sortie.

[NGTM-1R]

In any sense, I volunteer myself for research, engineering, and development.

Congratulations, you're the autopsy doc now. I've been meaning to throw out all our assembled research on that.

[JGZinv]

Although, Oh Captain My Captain, The E, I do wonder how you managed to skip Lt.

In any sense, I volunteer myself for research, engineering, and development.

Brother Thaeris I will count on your speedy advancements to yield a battle wagon of great capabilities in which to mutilate our cowardly foes from afar.

[StarSlayer]

Oh dear.  That's a lot of blood on my hands. Not a particularly auspicious start to a short career.  Oh well, if I ever make it out of whatever psych ward I must have been sent to I wouldn't mind having another go.

I did after all request to Die Standing.

[NGTM-1R]

You'll probably yet get a chance (and god does that scare me), as Squad 2 has some real stinkers on it currently.

Hades and esarai must have faked their entry physicals; even in powered armor with an antigravity system, they can't carry the weight of a laser rifle, a medikit, and a grenade.

Brother Thaeris I will count on your speedy advancements to yield a battle wagon of great capabilities in which to mutilate our cowardly foes from afar.

You're slated to operate Interceptor 4 out of Dekker's Pad, at least until the Hanger at Storm Track goes up.

[Scotty]

Can UFOs you shoot down effect repairs in the field and leave again?

[NGTM-1R]

Can UFOs you shoot down effect repairs in the field and leave again?

In theory, no, but if you leave a crashed UFO alone too long, it disappears from the map. This possibility is one of the reasons why it might be so. (Other suggested ones are that local forces attempt recovery or that the aliens destroy the ship and themselves.)